


hope, love, and other 4-letter words

by clairelutra (exosolarmoon), sharpshooting



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Lance (Voltron), M/M, past sheith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 02:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15305904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exosolarmoon/pseuds/clairelutra, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharpshooting/pseuds/sharpshooting
Summary: Keith didn't ask to be hauled out of bed at this ungodly hour of the morning for something like a trip to a beach, but sometimes Lance is just impossible to say 'no' to.





	hope, love, and other 4-letter words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kuron-protection-squad](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=kuron-protection-squad).



> AYYYY sorry this is late, but i'm your gifter for the shklance summer exchange, Aenon! i played a bit fast-and-loose with your prompts, but the 'soulmate meeting on the beach' and the 'collecting seashells' bits are still in there, so my apologies for the *majority* of the fic, if not all of it :')

Keith woke to loud pounding.

He stumbled out of bed in a haze, located the source at his door, and wrenched it open. It was like opening an oven, he thought, then decided that it was far too hot to want to eat baked yams and he should really go back to sleeping on his stoplight.

At the door was Lance—or, at least, Keith thought it was Lance. He didn't know any other brownish blob that would be making that sort of racket at this hour.

"Yo, did you just wake up?" Lance wondered, loud and abrasive against Keith's raw eardrums.

"Mmlfghth," Keith replied intelligently. There was some grain of long-forgotten courtesy keeping him from shutting the door in Lance's face.

"Duuude, we're going to the beach, remember?"

"No," said Keith. It was the only word simple enough to work right now.

"It's like noon," Lance informed him, "and we need to get there _now_ if we're gonna catch the best rays and the best waves."

"Ugh," said Keith.

Lance huffed and ushered him back into his apartment, grumbling at him the whole while.

After Keith lost his first soulmate, he had been all set up to hate his new one, but Lance was proving impossible to dislike. He fussed, he mothered, he mocked, he was _always_ just that loud and abrasive and was continuously, _constantly_ in Keith's face, and yet... he was exactly what Keith needed.

He pushed Keith into pushing back, and after three years of drowning, that was no small miracle.

* * *

Keith let himself be stripped down and redressed in swim trunks and a truly awful Hawaiian button-down, then wrangled down the stairs and into the passenger seat of his own tired old Toyota as Lance made his keys rattle something _awful_.

Still more in dreamland than in wakeland or _whatever_ , Keith rested his forehead on the fever-hot window and mumbled, "Don't crash."

"Aw, c'mon," Lance laughed, turning the key and revving the engine in a way that was _completely_ unnecessary for a granny Camary. "I'm insured!"

"You're a _high schooler_ ," Keith groaned back. There was a point to that sentence, but he lost it in the rumble of the seat below him.

"Which is _why—_ " and he started pulling out of Keith's parking spot in a rather worrying way, "— _I_ am the only person who knows how to have fun around here. College kills your fun-centers, it's scientifically proven."

"It's called being a good student."

Lance made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, like he didn't know he was the reason Keith was finally managing to put his life back together again—or like he _did_ know, and didn't approve.

(Losing Shiro had left Keith winded and empty and lifeless. Keith's newfound mother had picked him up out of the gutter, dusted him off, and given him a strong hug, but it wasn't until Lance had stomped into his life and demanded that he _care_ that Keith had found it in himself to do so.

Eating and sleeping regularly, signing up for school again, doing his homework and talking to his teachers... it was somehow so much more important now that Lance was here, Lance was looking up to him, and Lance had expectations of him, no matter how unconscious they were.

As grating as Lance was, Keith couldn't bring himself to let him down.)

He let himself drift for most of the ride, not even noticing the radio-buzzing silence until Lance let out a crow of, "Aw yeah—parking!"

Keith blinked awake, vertigo striking with the bright and busy world, and found that yes, there was indeed beachside parking.

"I _told_ you getting an early start was the way to go."

Keith blinked at the place where he knew the car's clock was. It took about five or so of those for his vision to clear enough to show him _11:07_ in faded green. "Cool."

Keith's statement fell into the strains of Carly Rae Jepsen and just kind of... stayed there.

Well. That was odd.

Lance was quiet as he navigated them into one of the nicer spots, careful as he parked them and turned off the engine.

Now slightly more alert than before, Keith could see the turmoil on Lance's face, the crease between his eyebrows and the tightness of his mouth.

"Is... something wrong?"

Lance sniffed, a suspiciously wet sound. "No."

And this was the hardest part of having a soulmate for Keith. Keith was _bad_ at emotions, both his own and other people's. Was now the time to press or to let it be? what should he say if Lance was angry with _him—_

Wait, did he forget an anniversary or something?

Hmmm, no, no, they were coming up on six months of, well, knowing each other, but that wasn't for another couple of weeks.

Then... what?

"...Are you sure?" he asked carefully.

"...No."

Keith tried not to outwardly flinch at the crack in Lance's voice, but couldn't stop his gut from churning painfully. "What's wrong?"

"Am I a bad soulmate?" Lance asked, sounding small.

"...What?" The thought had never even crossed Keith's mind.

"Or, I guess I mean... D'you wish you had someone else?"

Keith had wished for 'anyone but Lance' for the first week or so and then never thought it again, but now he was too floored to say a thing.

"Because, like," Lance said, then swallowed, "You've said it a million times—I'm a high schooler. And I'm loud. And I'm dumb. And I don't leave you alone, and... I guess... I just wanna know if you _wish_ I'd leave you alone. I... I know when I'm not wanted, but with you, I just can't seem to tell."

And what could Keith say to that? _Of course you're wanted._ The thought of losing him was the kind of thing that had Keith waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

He felt wide awake _now,_ but it was still too early to try to put that thought-feeling-fear into words.

"Of course not," he said, but Lance was on a roll.

"Like, I know you're out of my league, _I know_ , and you couldn't choose this but—"

"What?"

"—I'm _trying_ not to completely suck at it, but you're so _you_ and I don't even know if you're mad I made you come here today and I'm just... scared I'll screw up..."

Lance thumped his forehead down on the steering wheel, and—

_BLAAAAAAM_

They both jumped about a foot in the air.

Keith's heartbeat rattled against his teeth, all of his hair standing on end. He looked over at Lance, whose eyes were blown wide, even more cartoonishly shocked than usual, and barked out a laugh before he could stop himself.

Lance slumped. "Like that."

Still chuckling, Keith reached out and squeezed Lance's shoulder, reeling him in close enough that he could rest his forehead against Lance's temple. "Hey."

Lance's throat made a clicky sound. "Hey."

"I love you."

Lance twitched.

"My life is better... _better_ with you around." It was easier than Keith thought it would be to go on.

"...Oh."

The skin against Keith's nose was heating. He nuzzled into it like his mother sometimes nuzzled him, rough and comfortable and affectionate. "It's easier to laugh when you're around."

"Oh, _well_ ," said Lance, like he was trying for pique through his fluster, "I'm glad I'm good for _something._ "

"You're good for everything," Keith said, then kissed his temple, wrapping his other arm around Lance's bony shoulders and pulling him into a full hug over the seat divider.

"You're too sappy, _god,_ " Lance mumbled, but hugged him back and buried his face in his shoulder.

Keith breathed in slow, the smell of skin and Lance's favorite cologne innately soothing, and said, "You're the reason everything's going right. You and your dumb smile and your dragging me out of bed at 10 A.M. to go to the beach." He turned his head to kiss him again, lips catching that spot behind Lance's jaw, under his ear, making Lance squeak and squirm. "...Thank you."

"I take it back," said Lance, muffling himself into near-indecipherableness in the material of Keith's polo shirt. "You're not just too sappy. You're the _sappiest._ Sappier than sappy."

"Heh."

"I had this whoooole romantic thing planned out," Lance grumbled. "I was gonna reenact our first meeting and _everything_. And now you have me beat. How fair is that?"

...Oh yeah.

They _had_ met on this beach, hadn't they?

"'You've got ice cream on your shirt,'" Keith said, quoting the words smeared across Lance collarbone and smiling at the memory.

 _"'You_ have _sand_ on your... everything,'" Lance snickered back, quoting the words peppered down the back of Keith's calf.

Another long beat reigned, both of them content to just hold and be held, then Lance said, "You're just so... _pretty_ and _cool_ all the time, no matter what happens. You're my college boyfriend who has his own apartment and doesn't even really suck at it."

"I dunno. I'm kind of a mess," Keith admitted. "I didn't care about it for a long time, but... now you're making me want to be less of a mess. That's pretty huge."

Lance swallowed and held Keith tighter.

"Wanna go see who can find the most awesome seashell?" Keith said; a peace offering.

Lance relaxed out of the hug, surreptitiously scrubbing his eyes as he drew away. "You're on."


End file.
